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Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

The way that I've made splits for years has been the traditional way, I guess, of first looking for the queen then making up the nuc splits. I'm trying to make up about 80 queenless nukes for queen cell introduction. With me and my helper we made up 37 queenless nucs just by opening a colony and looking for the queen first. This takes alot of time, and some times the queen is not easy to find, especially if the colony is getting ready to swarm. Does anybody have a good methode of making up splits on a large scale, and finding the queen? Anything to cut down the time. Thanks.
JG

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

Locate the frames you want to use in the nucs. Shake all bees off and place frames with foundation in place of those frames. Place the frames you want to use in the nucs in another box. Place an excluder between the bottom brood box and the new box with the frames you are going to use for the nucs.

In 2-3 hours the nurse bees will move up through the excluder to frames with the brood while the queen is forced to stay below.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

And remember...you don't have to take everything for each nuc from only one hive. You can take brood from one or two hives, shake the bees off, and locate nuc on an excluder on another hive, taking only bees from that hive.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I use the same method as described above

When I get behind or I am dealing with alot of bees I use a different method when making up splits ,
We will arrange the brood accordingly between the two boxes, and remove all the top boxes of the doubles to another yard
wait a few days, and queen anything that has emergency cells

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I have used bothmethods described by Ian. The first we use a lot, slower but you can take just the right amount, without weakening the hive too much. The second is good in that once the singles are on the ground you are more or less done. you will need to check for eggs/cells but unlike the nuc you will not need to switch the frames from into a single.

Fr hives that are about to swarm, do notbother with finding the queen. Just explode it into ,4 or 5 frame units. They will no longer have the urge to swarm. You can find the old queen 3 days later.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

Hey thanks Ian, I will be using this method. It sounds pretty good. Some of my hives are gearing up for swarming, and I just don't have the time to go through all my hives frame by frame looking for the queen. Im raising several hundred queens so I need to make up queenless nucs to put in the queen cells, ASAP. The bees don't wait for us to get around, everything happens at once. Thanks again, and may you have a great year.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

If you have at least 5 days ahead you can slip your excluder between the boxes and then look for where the eggs are at when you split them. Sometimes it's just as important to know where she isn't as it is to know where she is.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

Ian: I have done it a few times and it's kind of nice information to have as you are splitting a hive but we have never worked it into our operation for a number of reasons the biggest one being that planning 5 days ahead during nucing season is next to an impossibility for me with everything else that is going on at the same time. Frankly what we do is to spend the time finding the queens. I know that's not what the op was asking for but 40 doubles a day is pretty doable once you get the hang of it. The easiest thing is simply to not look for anything and either look for cells in a couple days as Ian suggests or simply put a cell in everything. I have tried shaking them down below an excluder but it creates too much turmoil in the yard to suit me.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I'm with Jim........don't like the "turmoil". Most often we just make the splits and 'cell' everything. If we are using mated queens.....we make the splits, wait 72 hours and go back and look for cells or no eggs and give them a queen. I know a very large commercial that 'cells' everything with a "cell protector" now. A smaller guy I know has a unique variation......say hive #1 he splits into 5 supers stacked on top of each other. He then writes a #1 on each of the five supers....comes back at night, places each of the five supers on a pallet and moves them. 72 hours later he starts looking for eggs......if there are no eggs then he places a cell in it. If by chance the second hive of the #1 has the queen he doesn't need to check any more of the #1 but simply place a cell in them. Don't know if that made sense or not but it does save him time.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I know this is going away from the topic a little, but how many of yall use cells to queen your singles? I have tossed around the idea of using more cells this year than mated and was wondering how well your percent take is in the singles?

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I do use cells when I re-queen as well as mated queens. The desadvantages of using the cells is that the weather may prevent her from recieving good matings, (rainy, cold, ect.), or during her mating flight, she can be snatched up my an insect eating birds. When I raise queen and put in my queen cells, on a good, perfect day, I may get 80% succes.

Re: Making Splits and looking for the Queen; Is there a better way?

I look for the queen as I'm making up the nuc and I'm comfortable enough that if I don't see her on a frame inside of 30 seconds that she is not on it. quite often I'll find her as I'm making up the nuc and I just set her aside. The time of year also helps, it's easier to find a queen in the spring then in mid summer during a flow. My worst is that I grabed 2% of the queens but most often I grab none. It takes about 5-7 minutes to make a nuc like that from the opening the hive to putting the lid on your hive and nuc.

If you have a partner out there with you you can double check the the frames. When my dad and I made nucs I would open the hive and as I came across the frames for the nuc I would give it a quick check 15-20 seconds then pass it to my dad who would check it until I passed him the next frame. When the nuc was made he'd close everything up while I moved onto the next hive.